- Don't say it didn't. It did.
How TV Ruined Your Life (January 2011–March 2011) is a series from Charlie Brooker and a fine example of Hypocritical Humour. In this TV series, Brooker illustrates the various ways that the hateful lie-box has ruined your life, by giving you a flawed image of reality. The show itself takes the form of a combination of clips from shows with commentary, strange skits, and parodies. Each episode focuses on a particular way that TV has ruined your life, such as by filling you with fear, or giving you false and impossible aspirations.
Unrelated to TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life.
This series provides examples of:
- Apocalypse How: In a parody of doomsday shows, the world ends by pens getting inexplicably hot.
- The Beautiful Elite: They make you feel ugly and set your standards too high.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: Televised humiliation.
- Documentary Episode: the Knowledge episode parodies and discusses TV documentaries.
- My God, What Have I Done?: In the "Fear" episode, Brooker becomes paranoid after watching too much TV and kills an intruder who turns out to be his kindly old neighbour.
- Shout-Out: The episode on technology features a sketch in which a supercomputer AI judges a talent competition: the computer is, of course, Zog 900.
- Stealth Parody:
- Sometimes the lines between real TV shows and the parodies made for the program are so blurred that the only hint of something being fake is when "ShitPeas Productions" is subtly listed as the producer.
- The technology episode had a segment where people were asked their opinions on a phone that let you make calls through time. These reactions were real.
